Thinking in Circles
by Tafferling
Summary: Being stuck in a zombie apocalypse, semi-private or not, sucks. So what kind of idiot would go trekking through one to find the absolute perfect ring for popping the Q? Kyle Crane, of course.
1. Dead Ringer or not

**Taffer Notes: **This is a companion piece to **Latchkey Hero**. Spoilers ahead, since it takes place after the midseason finale in Season 3. Considered Latchkey canon.

Written by **MaverickWerewolf** over on Ao3. Since she doesn't have an account here, I get the honours of posting it. Any and all comments will be passed on to her! I love it a lot and it's the best and she's amazing.

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**Dead ringer... or not**

* * *

**R**ings.

No, not _rings _– _a _ring. Singular. Worry about the other ones later, right?

From where he sat perched on atop one of the taller buildings overlooking the town – or "that shithole over there," depending on who you asked – Kyle surveyed the streets and absently pushed his sleeves farther up above his elbows.

All he had to do was find one teeny-tiny Fi-finger-sized circle of gold (_gold _gold; he wasn't settling for something out of a box of fucking Crackerjacks) somewhere out there in that relatively little handful of civilization.

Pssht. Civilization only if zombies counted as civvies.

Really, why didn't he at least do this back in Harran? He had _lots _of space to look around there, and now here he was about to turn upside down a small cluster of buildings Harran could've swallowed whole a few times over.

Not only did he have to do that, he had to find that one home of that one happily engaged whoever that _didn't _happen to be wearing their ring when all this started. Or else that one _un_happy fiance that took theirs off at some point, or else…

Probably ought to get to it instead of thinking about it. Which meant he had to cross the street, and crossing the street always sucked.

Getting to his feet, Kyle set his sights on what he guessed was a set of apartments, leaning on a nearby rusty railing just long enough for it to creak at him and let him know it was about to dump him right down into the street.

So he vaulted over it instead (which was absolutely stupid, all things considered), landing flat on his back on a once-colorful tarp stretched out down below.

It immediately stripped noisily away at the poles holding it up, making him scramble up and off it and somehow keep his balance while stretching one leg out, making a leap to the top of a nearby van instead.

Fine, maybe he should stop with the tarp-landing thing.

A couple biters shuffled their way over to the commotion like bad neighbors who'd heard something make a loud and overly interesting _thud_, but Kyle was already up and finding a hopscotch course of car roofs to take him far enough to jump, fingers finding a ledge, and hoist his tired ass up onto somebody's porch.

A porch with a lawnchair and a somebody still sitting in it, except now their face was less a face and more a bloodied set of teeth poking out from half-rotten skin surrounding a pair of bugged-out zombie eyes that locked onto him instantly.

It rattled up a harsh groan-growl like he'd disturbed its beauty sleep and twitched trying to surge out of the chair at him. But he was already gone in quick flap of those neat red danglies from his belt (they looked cool when he ran, okay?) and a blurted _Shit_.

The door wasn't far, so Kyle went to throw it open and stop riling up Beauty-Sleep, but a rattling lock told him to fuck right off when he got there. And now Beauty-Sleep was up and staggering toward him, slowly lifting gnarled hands his way, looking for lunch.

Well, that didn't take long. Was he getting _worse _at this, or was he seriously this distracted?

Snatching the hatchet from his belt, he threw a hard swing to knock Beauty-Sleep's arms away so those fingers wouldn't ruin his nicely pressed new shirt (who was he kidding, his shirt looked like hell). Bringing his weapon back around, he caught the blade right in the back of the zombie's neck and sent it crashing to the floor with a not-so-neatly, mostly-severed spine, and a whole lot of putrid blood that painted the previously pretty porch, and try saying that three times fast.

Nope, not getting worse. Only better, thank you very much. Now Beauty-Sleep could get all the rest they wanted down in hell.

_Okay, that was plain terrible._

Planting a foot on the zombie's back, he pried the hatchet blade from its neck – it was actually pretty hard to get a blade out of a person's bone, by the way; the movies always made it look too easy – and slung some of the gunk off before sliding it into his belt again and turning back to the door, kneeling and whipping out a set of lockpicks.

He was good at _this_, too. Nimble fingers and all that… Fingers.

Fingers. Rings. Rings that went _on _fingers, a whole lot littler than his.

What ring size was she, anyway? How would he even _tell _ring size? That shit was _really _particular. Last time he'd tried on rings from one of those big ugly heavy sets of metal bands they waved around in jewelry stores, he'd figured he'd wear it for life because he couldn't get one size back _off _and he'd had to stick it under running water and all that embarrassing shit while everybody else har-har'd over just how funny it was—

What if he found a ring and it _didn't fit?_

Aw man. He'd die. On the spot. Clutch his heart and fall over stiff as a board.

_Snap_, his lockpick went.

_Ow_. It broke right in his face and made him flinch, because he'd gone and almost stuffed his nose right up against the door while staring very hard at the inside of his brain.

That was fine. He had this.

When he finally – not that it'd taken him _that _long, just a little longer than usual – got the lock open, he slipped inside and glanced around.

Seemed like a nice place. With a locked door on this side and broken-in windows on the other side, big enough that he could've climbed through. His insides twisted into a few embarrassed knots and he told some tittering little voice in his head to shut up.

_You aren't paying _any _attention, you dumbass. _And how long had he been doing this now?

Okay. Rings. Ring. Singular. All he had to find was one and he was home free.

There were a few chairs, bookshelves, shelves of movies, an overturned TV in one corner – pushing past a tattered cloth hanging in a doorway, he found shit scattered everywhere in a bedroom: duffel bags ripped wide open and left laying around, loaded with a whole bunch of useless junk.

But his filter snapped on through all the muddied flailing over rings to tell him that meant whoever had come in here to raid the place had _wanted _'useless' junk. Wanted things like bits of plastic and wire. Only tools, electronics, or else bits that could be fashioned into something else – raiding to survive, not to sell.

So, they'd not wanted rings. Who wanted a _ring _in the apocalypse?

This guy, of course. Kyle fucking Crane, at your service.

Anyway, that meant if there were any rings in here, they probably would've been overlooked or left entirely. He went over to a nearby dresser and started rifling around.

Didn't actually take long for his super nimble, calloused fingers that definitely weren't knocking everything in the floor (not like it mattered) to find a velvety little ring box. And another one, on the opposite side of the wide wooden surface.

Two. _Jackpot._

He cracked one open and found a fat-ass gold ring set with a heavy chunk of onyx staring back at him. That was a dude's ring. Great.

Tossing that over his shoulder, he tried the next one – which turned out to be empty.

Kyle groaned and snapped it shut, throwing that one over his shoulder, too.

_Thunk_. It hit something just behind him that was way too high up to be the floor. He froze.

Sneaky fucker.

Turning and pulling his hatchet, he whirled and stumbled back, very gracefully slamming his rear end into the drawers of the dresser he'd been scavenging and almost knocking the mirror on it right down onto his distracted head.

A biter had made its – _her _– way over to him while he was busy working hard getting himself killed looking for a ring. Now stood there glowering like it'd – _she'd _– kind of locked up halfway across the room and then had stopped there, dumbfounded, when a little ring box had hit her in the noggin.

Probably _her _ring box.

When she stumbled forward, Kyle brought up one leg to kick her a good several paces back. Enough for him to hoist the hatchet again and knock her head hard so askew that she staggered and fell lopsided into a heap, moaning and struggling to get up or else right her hands enough to drag herself around on the floorboards.

He kind of prided himself on braining zombies. _Heheh. _That was funny.

Sunlight spilling in through one of those windows he totally should've used to get in here glinted off a speck of something shining through all the grime on the her fingers – a ring.

A gold ring. Except his mind sputtered and stalled to a halt.

Because this ring was on a zombie woman's finger. A dead woman. A person who'd had a life once.

Oh. He was being a looter right now.

Great. _Great, you were gonna get her a _used _ring as good as pried off somebody's finger that some other person got for _their _special person. _All covered in their skin particles and memories and shit.

He sure was a _mean _fuck.

Yeah, he wasn't doing this. Abort mission. Find a fucking jewelry store, get something _New. _Not _Like New _or _Used _or _Actually a Zombie's_, without so much as a note about potential crusty old blood.

If the kind woman in the floor wasn't currently totally overloaded with wanting to eat him and trying to right herself with a giant bloody rut carved into her caved-in skull, he would've apologized before he made his way out. He was considerate like that.

As it was, though, Kyle just turned and went out one of those windows he hadn't seen before because he was currently riding extra high on the dumbass scale.


	2. Ringed Out

**L**ooking for a ring already turned into looking for a jewelry store - and now it's about to turn into something else.

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**Ringed Out.**

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**F**inding a jewelry store in the middle of one town in the middle of the zombie apocalypse turned out to be like trying to find an animal shelter in the arctic.

Aw man. Animal shelters. He so missed dogs. Mostly his dog, but any dog. And now he just wanted puppies the way a Disney princess got birds. Picture that for a minute and try to tell him it wasn't the best thing ever.

Sadly, he didn't have any dogs, and he wasn't a smart enough dog to be told to go fetch a ring and bring one back… to… himself. That metaphor went nowhere. A dog trying to pick up a ring would probably just swallow it, anyway.

Kyle thought about all that ridiculous shit while he sat perched on the corner of another roof, fingers (and yes he'd cleaned them, he wasn't a complete ape) stuffed deep in a bag of some little awesome cheese crackers that had somehow managed to go overlooked and uneaten in a broken old vending machine. So he'd liberated them from their lonely useless existence in a bag and was busily introducing them to his stomach instead.

Except these bags were really fucking tiny and he was still hungry. He frowned at it, ripped it open wider, and poured all the crumbs into his mouth. Then he briefly considered eating the bag while he was at it, until he looked past that bag with its colorful not-true-to-scale picture of the crackers on it taunting him and saw the lower half of a store sign a street and a half away.

EWELRY. The J had fucked off someplace and only left its ew behind.

Oh, and the upper stories were on fire.

When he'd joined that Dungeons and Dragons game back at the Tower, there'd been this feat called Luck of Heroes in the absolutely fuck-all-huge feat list. He took it, even though Collin told him it was kind of shit in the long run. But it seemed like a neat feat (snicker, snicker), and one he really wanted in real life.

Because if he was supposed to be a hero, and heroes were also supposed to be lucky, then just what in the hell was wrong with this picture?

Wow, you're a real ray of sunshine right now. He could've been eaten by zombies a couple times over, and here he was complaining because the one jewelry store in this little slice of countryside was about to burn down. At least he'd found one at all, right?

So he started his way clambering back down the side of the building, balled up the cracker bag and threw it into a trashcan (score!) and then wondered why in this good green earth – that was looking not at all green from here – he'd bothered doing that. It wasn't like anyone around here took out the trash.

But he was going to stay environmentally friendly, thank you very much.

Then he went ahead and started car-roof-hopscotching down the street again, with too many avid hangry zombies snatching after his ankles.

Going back to before, though, what was up with the ray of sunshine saying, anyway? It was a totally unfair comparison. Because of course the sun was always happy. It was the fucking sun. Nothing could stop it and everybody had to live under it all the time, and if it didn't like something, it was probably going to melt it. Then again, it probably melted it even if it liked it. So maybe it got lonely; who knew. Maybe the sun was actually depressed, or trying to get vengeance by burning the fuck out of everyone.

Getting closer to the building, he could already feel the heat rolling off that fire swallowing up the whole top story and definitely threatening the crash everything down onto the floor below. The one he needed to get to, because that was the jewelry store.

Coughing at all the smoke, he pulled his filthy-ass shirt up over his nose, for all the good that did. Why were there fires around, anyway? Did zombies play with matches or what?

Better question was: should he even go in there? From here on top of a police van, he could barely see the open windows through the smoke: smashed, destroyed, glass shards littering the street.

That was before his filter kicked in and added: smashed outward, not inward. Somebody inside had wanted to get out, not the other way around. And the shards were kicked around a bit. Scattered. They'd been there for a while with people – actually, zombies – walking… No, shuffling through them.

More importantly, though, the building was on fucking fire.

He was going in though. Duh. Definitely doing it. Nobody ever said he was burdened with an overabundance of good sense. Just good looks ( great looks), good skills (also great, though), good wit (basically the best ever)… None of which necessarily counted as good sense.

Oh, and he also had good taste. Really good taste.

Anyway, going in.

Kyle went to the nearest broad, broken-open window and vaulted right inside. Thankfully there wasn't a whole lot of broken glass left that was actually in the way to stop him from doing that. Not that it would've stopped him, but at least he didn't get the hand equivalent of bare feet in Nakatomi Tower.

The building's personal inferno was still a problem, though. Roiling smoke tried to choke him the second he took even half a breath, and he stooped low, eyes burning as he hurried past various display cases…

All of them broken. The glass smashed inward from above, left in pieces strewn all inside. Every stand and row meant for necklaces, rings – everything empty, except a few evidence markers already turning black from the smoke.

"Fuck me," Kyle rasped aloud.

He made his way behind a few of the counters and threw open, or bashed open, some various drawers and cabinets, just in case. All of those were empty, too.

The whole place was empty. It'd been completely cleaned out, like an army had come through making sure not to miss a single ring. And damn if he didn't feel like somebody had just stolen all the presents out from under his theoretical Christmas tree – which had already been on fire, so he really didn't need another kick to the nuts.

Not that he needed any of those ever, anyway.

Giving the nearest jewelry cabinet a good shove to let it know how frustrated he was (surprise: it didn't care – not that it probably would've cared about much, if it could've cared, given it was about to literally die in a fire), Kyle turned and went back out that window.

His boots landed with a crunch in the leftover glass shards still scattered on the sidewalk. Tugging his shirt off his nose, he coughed some stale air and singeing smoke from his lungs while he got busy running over to, and scrambling back up onto, that van halfway wrecked nearby.

No time to stand around. The local population had already heard him land and decided it was lunchtime. A cascade of moans and rattling breaths, and shoes or bare, scabbed feet scuffing the pavement was already heading his way. It brought with it an all too familiar waft of decay and stale blood that hadn't ever stopped making his stomach want to roll over.

With these guys, of course, it was always lunchtime. They were like fucking hobbits. Except they were tall and disgusting and… Okay, they had basically nothing in common with hobbits other than second breakfast.

Had he mentioned he'd been playing too much D&D lately? Although Collin had also told him hobbits weren't D&D, those were Lord of the Rings. Kyle had then reread the description and promptly declared, But they're the same fucking thing.

He'd seen the movies, okay?

And it was kind of hard not to think about them right now when he was on a big personal idiot quest over a single gold ring. Especially since he felt like he'd just come out from a volcano. Except he didn't find a ring and he didn't have a ring and he definitely didn't pitch one into said fire, because whenever he did find one, he'd have worked his ass off so hard for it by then that he really was going to call it his precious.

Right now he was the lord of the no fucking rings at all.

Anyway, what he would've loved to do was find a nice perch someplace and do all his ruminating up there, but he really needed a breather after all the smoke and shit.

So what was he supposed to do with the hours he had left in the one day he'd marked off on his super booked calendar to come out here and look for a ring? More specifically, how could he actually find one?

He was smart. He could figure this out. His brain only communicated in bullshit half – okay, over half – the time as a ploy to cover up how incredibly intelligent he actually was.

Which directly contradicted what he'd thought earlier about not having much good sense, and – if he did have any – how he totally neglected it and let it turn brown and stale and starve like some asshole's undertended Chia pet (don't look at him like that), but that was all totally beside the point.

There was one thing he'd found in that jewelry store: evidence markers. Which meant the jewelry store had been robbed before this whole Harran virus business, because somebody had bothered calling the cops and those cops had bothered investigating. Maybe he'd just gotten a lucky break.

Because maybe the police had filed reports of the break-in at the station. And maybe, just maybe, they had some rings left in evidence.

That might even work. And if there weren't any rings, he'd just have to look through the reports and finish up this hopefully unsolved crime and find where all the jewelry was actually taken.

So Kyle put on his theoretical deerstalker and got ready to play detective.


End file.
